Is God dependent?

The following article comes from the unpublished work “How Well do I Know God.”

b. God is also dependent

How can or is the Almighty, all-sustaining God of the universe dependent? Or is He? We normally do not think in terms of God being dependent, do we? In fact, this may even sound heretical at first. After all, He is the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, everywhere present God. Everything that was, is, or will be, comes from Him. How can God be dependent on anything when everything is dependent on him? 

Well, in fact, He isn't dependent on just anything. God is definitely not dependent on anything in creation. Logic alone tells us this. Because He created and sustains everything, the creation depends on Him and not the other way around.

What about God being dependent on Himself? Is this even possible? It’s not too far-fetched when you consider even we as mere finite humans seek to depend on ourselves and no one else. But for God, what exactly does this mean or look like? As suggested in an earlier article, the grounds for God’s independence is His interdependence. This is a mystery but in a very real sense, God is just as dependent on Himself as we are dependent on Him. So yes, God is dependent but only within His own being, not on anything outside Himself. 

However, is this real dependence as you and I understand it? If so, how? 

God is a being of three distinct persons within one God. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit relate to

each other as truly distinct persons with separate and distinct roles while at the same time making up only one God. Therefore, dependence - or in God's case, interdependence - is fundamental to His being and is central to His makeup. Just because it is dependence within Himself, does not make it any less dependence or a felt reality. We may not be able to make sense of this logically, but we certainly see the evidence of it in how God relates to Himself first, then to us, and how we relate to Him. As we progress, we hope to make this clearer.

What is the practical significance of His being dependent? There are several things. Because God is interdependent, He is also an inter-relational and an inter-communicating being. He is a self-contained community if you will. Therefore, He truly understands what it means to need and can identify with the feeling of need. How is this possible? In, through and by the incarnation of Christ, several unique things occurred. 

Did not the Son (God) experience the pain of the crucifixion and subsequent separation from His Father? And did not Christ also experience the consequences of sin during His crucifixion with the emotional, spiritual and physical impact of this as well throughout his ministry? While on earth he entered fully - likely more than anyone - into the brokenness of this world and humanity. He experienced hunger; he got tired; he was treated throughout his earthly ministry as if he were infinitely less significant than he truly was. At the end of it all, he suffered the consequences of judgment, condemnation, punishment, and shame. Even though these were not due to His own sin (he had none), the painful consequences he experienced were as if they were - and more so since He bore the judgment of many and we only bear our own (if we are outside of Christ). 

We are told we have a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our infirmities, do we not? Why? He’s been there, done that, as they say. Remember His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane as He faced the prospect of bearing the full consequences of your sin and mine, with the full weight of judgment and separation from His Father bearing down on Him? Experts say in order to sweat blood the emotional stress must be almost unimaginable to rupture the tiniest of blood vessels at the surface of our skin. 

Did not God the Father also experience the loss and pain of separation from His only begotten Son, the Son of His eternal love? On account of the inter-relationship of the Father with His Son, it was not just the Son who experienced the suffering of the cross, but the Father also, due to His infinite love for the Son. Not unlike any loving father would feel pain when He sees His child suffer loss or injustice. On account of this, God and His Son fully entered into all aspects of pain and suffering caused by separation, as well as experiencing the sins committed against Christ as a man on earth.

When you have been estranged from someone you loved; one of your kids, a parent or a spouse because of some offense causing a rift between you, how did (or does) it feel? Whatever it is you ¹felt, God the Father and the Son also felt this. Granted the separation the Son experienced was due to our sins and not His own, it was still separation nonetheless, with all the existential ramifications. 

God understands truly not only what relationship is but also what losing it feels like, possibly in a way even greater than we do. If the level of relationship, unity, and dependence between the Father and Son is perfect and on an infinitely higher level than our own, wouldn’t the pain of its loss also be infinitely greater? God not only understands the joy of loving and being loved, of honoring and being honored but also the pain of losing that love and honor and feeling its loss in and through Christ.

The fact that Christ’s heinous and reprehensible death was not due to any wrong He had done made the pain even greater. We have heard stories of someone being wrongfully accused, convicted, and then sentenced to a crime they did not commit. Then years later having that decision reversed due to new DNA evidence revealing their innocence. What a travesty of justice. The one incarcerated spends those lost years, never to be recovered, wondering if justice would ever be served. 

To suffer for your own wrongdoing, though hard, is justified, but to be accused and suffer for the wrong of someone else is the worst kind of suffering. It is the most unjust and feels the most unfair. Much of our suffering is due to our own sin. His was due only as a result of someone else's (ours).

1. A felt as well as real dependence

Christ emptying himself of His Divinity and becoming a man was a test of his trust of the Father in ways He never experienced before. He no longer had the advantage of full omniscience for understanding. While on earth He couldn’t see the complete outcome of everything as before because He willfully set it aside.

Mat 24:36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.

John 8:28 So Jesus said to them, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.

John 5:19 So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

John 5:30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my ²own will but the will of him who sent me.

Instead of being able to rely on His omniscient deity to know things, He now had to depend solely on His Father’s direction and what the Father revealed to Him and told Him to do. Whatever manifestations of supernatural power Christ displayed was solely from His dependence on and enabling of His Father through the Spirit (remember Christ performed no miracles or entered ministry until after the Spirit had come upon him). This itself was a kind of suffering for it was a loss of benefits He formally possessed i.e. omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience. He loved and trusted His Father from eternity past; losing these characteristics required Him to trust the Father in a way He never had experienced before. This helps us understand the statement in Hebrews that Christ learned obedience i.e. He learned how to set aside his own will and as a man faithfully follow His Father’s will and direction, through the struggles and suffering He endured. His lacking what was formally and fully His -- omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence -- required him to depend on His Father in a new and different way. He no longer knew things through His own first-hand experience but knew them by faith, i.e. He had to trust what the Father revealed to Him as true and right because He could no longer confirm them through first-hand knowledge (though he likely recalled his experiencing this before he became a man).

Even though the Father and Son had a relationship of interdependence prior to the incarnation, there was now a felt dependence between the Father and Son during the incarnation in a new way that did not exist prior to that event. He learned obedience-faith through the things he suffered i.e. He went from untested to tested obedience.

In light of these things God did and can experience all aspects of being in a relationship, just like you and I, the bad as well as the good. 

If so, what does this mean for us? As far as this discussion goes, God and His Son truly and really ¹feel our pain and weakness as well as our joys and pleasures, for they experienced them as well.

Heb 4:15 For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

“Tempted” is not the idea of being enticed to wrong but to endure the experience of a difficult event or its consequent struggle, i.e. to be tested or disciplined by it. In our struggle we are often enticed to self-comfort without necessarily partaking in it. 

Tempted: Πειράζω, peirazō, pi-rad'-zo; to test (objectively), that is, endeavor, scrutinize, entice, discipline: - assay, examine, go about, prove, tempt (-er), try.

God truly and really enjoys our love and appreciates our gratitude and honor, in the same way He does the honor and glory exchanged between the members of the Trinity. This is in part due to His being in relationship throughout eternity and our being able to enter into relationship with Him as His image-bearers, i.e. we are relational like God. Since God is a relational being and we are like Him we can really and truly bring joy to His heart, not unlike the joy His only begotten Son also brings to His heart. We can bring sadness to His heart when we are alienated from Him just as when His Son was alienated from Him at the cross for the same reason, i.e. for our sin, not His.

It is also worth mentioning that Christ is our elder brother and we too are considered sons and daughters – children - of God. Though we are not the eternal only begotten Son, we are adopted sons and daughters in Christ nevertheless, who will live with God our Father throughout eternity just as our elder brother Christ. As a result, God really and truly feels the give-and-take of relationship with us in a manner similar to what He feels with his Son and similar to how you and I feel it with our kids and each other.

If we stop to consider it, where does our ability to relate to others come from? Where do we get the capacity to feel the various aspects, both good and bad, of being in a relationship? Does it come out of a vacuum or simply because we are fallen due to our rebellion? We were relational before the fall, were we not? Would it make sense that we, as His creatures, could feel and experience something more or completely different regarding relationship than God Himself? No, these qualities are in us because they were in God first and are all a part of God’s being and therefore ours as His image-bearers.

In summary

The interaction of God as a triune being is key to what makes God a relational being instead of some stoic, unmoved, impersonal force. He not only designed relationship and understands it, He is relationship. This is just another way of saying God is love. Relationship is at the very core of His Being and has been from eternity past. It is in fact why God is love. He is not just another relational being but one of perfect giving and receiving of love, honor, and glory throughout eternity past. All other relationships are a reflection of the primary relationship of God as an inter-relational Being. Nothing He does is outside of relationship, whether that be within Himself or with you and I. Relationship, and therefore love is rooted in the very essence of His being. God doesn’t simply have love, He is love. He alone is the I AM. He has always been from all eternity past. God could not be a God of love if He were not a God of relationship first.

This also explains how we can truly enter into a real relationship with God and Him with us. Relationship is not something new, strange or awkward to God but has been a part of His make up from eternity past, before you and I ever entered the picture. Dependence within a relationship is a deeply rooted quality within God’s very makeup. Just because it is dependence within Himself does not make God any less dependent, or less a reality or less a relationship. So dependence is not just a reality of our existence, but is also God’s. For us, it is dependence on something or someone outside of our being. For God, it is dependence within His, but dependence just the same.

Therefore, our independence from God is in direct conflict with the reality of God’s dependence in a far more significant way than we may have previously considered. Our attempt at independence is contrary not just to who we are as dependent beings, but also to who God is as an interdependent being. God designed us for a relationship of dependence on Him so that we could participate in and experience this interdependence He has within Him. For us to attempt to be independent of God violates not just our nature but the very nature of God.

It must be clear that there is no one or nothing outside of God that He needs to be God. In theological terms, this is known as the aseity of God or His self-existence. This is the essence of God being the one and only "I AM." God is dependent on nothing and therefore requires nothing outside of Him to be God. He is self-sufficient, self-sustained and independent. I am suggesting this independence is rooted in his interdependence. 

For a further discussion on the incarnation of Christ click here. 

For a further discussion on God's interdependence click here. 

For a further discussion on the love, life, Spirit and essence of God click here
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¹some might argue this is contrary to the impassibility of God. This says God is not subject to suffering, pain, or the ebb and flow of involuntary passions. However, the independence of God prevents Him from being passionate out of a need for others, while passionate in His need for Himself. For a closer look at the impassibility of God, click here. 

²It is worth noting that Christ says he and the Father have a seperate will. Granted Christ’s will always submitted to the Fathers, so in that sense his was one and the same with the Fathers, but in order for Christ's obedience to be meaningful it had to be His choice.